


With Love, from...

by tredecaphobia



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-13
Updated: 2013-05-13
Packaged: 2017-12-11 19:00:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/802090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tredecaphobia/pseuds/tredecaphobia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Germany isn't sure why Greece attempted this foray into to the euro.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Love, from...

The day was already sweltering when Germany disembarked his flight and immediately started walking; he might have taken a taxi, but anyone who knew the youth would have also known that he had calculated the time it would have taken a taxi to arrive at his location and take him to his desired location, weighed that against his stamina, current physical state, and how many miles per hour he clocked walking.

The soil was dry, sending up in puffs around his ankles as he walked, and he noted the severity of the sun and the wilt of the olive crops this summer, and made an additional note of this. And though generally, Germany would have enjoyed such scenery and history imbued therein, he could not find the frivolity within himself that day to indulge in any of it.

It took roughly thirty minutes (ahead of schedule, he noted with some grim satisfaction, the only sort one could take from a job being well and efficiently done) before he rounded a bend in the endless, rolling and craggy landscape, fringed with sighing olives, and stopped before the white marble villa. Elegant was the word that would normally come to mind when seeing such a construction, but Ludwig only daubed absently at his forehead with the inside of his wrist, his mind a furious muddle.

He already knew he wasn’t going to enjoy this task, though his emotions on any matter that needed doing never prevented him from doing it, or doing it well. For as long as Germany had been alive and cognizant, Greece had never been of a stellar constitution (forever sleeping, anemic from wounds that had never quite healed, judging from the irregular hitches in his body when he moved), and Ludwig was forced, slightly unpleasantly, to wonder why Greece had even attempted his foray into the Euro at all. And so, without leaving himself room for further deliberation (if he did, he already knew he’d turn around and book himself a flight back to Berlin), started through the wrought iron gates to the inner courtyard.

Inside was still, like time had simply forgotten to visit and take toll on this place; a miasma of golden sunlight, birdsong, and the olive drab of vegetation sighed a constant dirge against the walls. But Luwig pressed onwards (already thinking, against his better judgment, such sentimental thoughts as the inevitable decay of humanity and civilization), mounting the sturdy, carpeted steps to the second floor. The light was muted here, cast in through a far window at the end of the hall, casting dappling patterns of oak leaves on the far door (the very one he had to go through; seeing it struck Ludwig with a strange sense of pretre vous, though he’d had no reason to think he’d seen it before). He pressed his wrist to his forehead again, noting absently his own rising temperature and threading heartbeat before steeling himself- he had to be stern, determined, not half-out of his mind with a flu and soft with sentiment- and trying the door.

It opened easily, almost with an apologetic meekness, to a small, east-looking room beyond; it was filled with the same, whispering miasma of golden light and desiccated leaves. A wire-framed electrical fan (what was that, a brand from the sixties? It must have been in Greece’s possession for at least that long) plugging admirably but ineffectively against the heat that had come to gather, it seemed, exclusively in this room; a digital alarm clock, the only modern trapping in this room, ticked steadily and silently against the march of time, within easy arm’s reach to the young man that lay on the bed.

Greece himself was laying with his customary repose in the long-worn bed and rather ancient frame; curled slightly onto one side, blankets, even in the heat, drawn up to the bottom of his bare chest, the only testament to the weather being the young man’s hair slightly damp with perspiration, and the sheen on his skin.

Without allowing himself more consideration of the room, or its furnishings, or even its occupant (if he did, there was a good possibility it would depress him, and then he would have felt forced to be more well-inclined to the occupant, and then he wouldn’t get anything done), Germany stepped forward briskly, seizing a fistful of the blanket and tearing it down in one efficient movement.

Suppressing an automatic reaction (which was to roll his eyes and sigh in slight disgust- why did all of the Mediterranean nations sleep absolutely naked?), he bent to take an inventory of the older youth’s physical state; his body was in an overall good condition (good genes, good upbringing; this body had been the one to fight and win against an Empire, and the scars showed, mapped out in a legend across his body- a scimitar here, a bayonet there- and it had been bodies like these that Ludwig had worshiped not so long ago; Ludwig shook his head and reapplied), but he looked moderately dehydrated, his temperature was high, and, most troubling of all, he wasn’t breathing.

Ludwig, however, unflappably removed the portable resuscitation unit he had packed in the bag of aid he’d brought off the plane, tipping the older man’s head to the side by his chin, and applied it methodically until there was a response. Greece’s eyes fluttered, and his chest rose and fell, now, of its own accord, but he seemed too weak to move much; as it was, he coughed and rearranged his lanky limbs, before exhausting himself with the task and lying still once more. He didn’t seem overtly bothered by his state of undress, but considered the newcomer to his room with a weathered interest.

“Germany.” He said, his voice even softer and slower than that of its normal range. He might have wanted to ask why Germany was here, or what he wanted, but couldn’t seem to find the energy adequate enough to do so.

“You’ve caused everyone a lot of trouble. You know that right?” Ludwig asked softly, completely unable to be as angry with the man as he wished to be. Greece just stared at him, and Ludwig came to the slightly startling and unwanted revelation (Peep not into a knothole, he remembered someone murmuring into his ear, and it suddenly had new meaning) that it was the gaze of one with nothing left to move forward to.

“I… know.” He supplied eventually, and so laboriously that Germany was surprised he had even attempted it at all, and continued with a tension in his body that suggested urgency. “I just… wanted… for everyone to be… happy.”

To this, Germany could find no adequate response (it was what every country wanted for their people; for Greece, it seemed more of a parent who wanted for their children what they never experienced, though the Greeks were now too young to remember any of what preyed on Herakles and kept him alive and desperate and fighting against something that had died more than a hundred years ago) that would neither cheapen Herakles’ words or seem completely cliché.

“I know.” Germany eventually said, not able to look at Herakles in the eyes now (should he have, he might have recognized something dark and desperate that wasn't alien to himself), and hooked an I.V. drip with Ringer’s solution onto the bed frame, and, swabbing the older youth’s arm with disinfectant, slipped the needle into the vein.

It wasn’t much, Germany thought, but it was a start while they waited for the rest of the aid supplies to arrive via transit delivery. And when Herakles wasn't looking quite so pathetic (and when he could stand to be firm with this youth who had lived too long and experienced too much, and had only wanted the best), Germany would teach him a thing or two about middle-management.

**Author's Note:**

> -As we all know by now, Greece is in kind of deep economical shit- 300 billion euros, or 400 billion dollars, which means he really doesn’t feel well. They basically frittered away their money on things like retiring at 55, or really short work weeks. These make people happy, but have lasting impacts on the economy, and thus Greece sicker and sicker.
> 
> -Despite their grousing (as I heard on NPR just the other day), the Germans, who are the only ones treating the euro right these days and playing by the rules, are the ones sending the most aid.


End file.
